Eight unexpected trends inspired by Disney's 'Frozen'

Friends, reindeer, ice harvesters, lend me your antlers: I have been tumbling through the wormhole that is the Internet fandom of Disney’s marvelous blockbuster Frozen. I have trudged through the snowy hills of fan-fiction, braved the icy winds of Deviantart, and prowled hashtag upon hashtag devoted to the greatest thing to happen to Disney musicals since July 22, 1949 (Alan Menken’s birthday, whaaat).

Beyond my Tumblr-inspired downward spiral, my social media feeds have abounded with proclamations of Frozen love following the film’s release in the now-ancient November 2013. The sprightly little musical has topped the box office charts, rivaling Avatar and Titanic, and gifted the world with a top-notch soundtrack that I haven’t been able to “let” “go” (get it? GET IT?) for weeks. But most interestingly, Frozen has given birth to some pretty bizarre trends—let’s examine.

1. Recording your children singing the songsPerhaps the idea of setting your toddler up in a semi-professional recording studio to mumble through 85% of the lyrics and match rough syllables for the other 15% is a trend that would have been widely practiced in the early ‘90s if technology permitted. Ostensibly due to the success of this four-year-old’s quadrilingual rendition of “Ledda Dough,” parents have started posting videos of their little tikes singing the songs of Frozen at the top of their lungs, as if to say, “This is what I’ve been dealing with.” Well the joke’s on them because these videos are damn near adorable, and I’m not sick of them…yet.

2. Shipping Elsa and AnnaDespite the fact that they are sisters in a children’s movie, determined fan-fic writers have decided to pair up the film’s princesses (everyone, meet Elsanna!) and expand their tender story of familial love into vaguely angsty and not-so-vaguely sexual stories chronicling their NSFW intertwined loins. Elsa and Anna’s parents passed very early on, leaving them alone with just each other’s company, so naturally they’re going to have… urges. Right? Wrong. They are SISTERS and this is Frozen, not Cruel Intentions. (Still, I take solace that they’re pairing Elsa/Anna and not Olaf/Sven.)

3. #thecoldneverbotheredmeanywayThe timing of Hercules (the winter storm, not the ginger gladiator) is seemingly perfect for inspiring this prevalent Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/nobody-uses-Vine hashtag. Except, of course, the cold appears to be bothering just about everyone, thereby slowly but surely chipping away at its novelty.

5. Elsa’s hairYouTube hair and makeup tutorials are par for the course for basically any film heroine these days (see: Rapunzel’s downdo or Katniss’s updo/sidedo/slantdo/longdo/backwaysdo). Unsurprisingly, Elsa’s King Koopa French braid has inspired quite a popular response in certain DIY circles. Expect no shortage of Halloween Elsae and Annae this year.

8. Grown adults freaking out about FrozenI don’t have any tangible evidence of this other than my own personal experience. The adults have embraced Frozen right alongside the tots, and the volume of their cheering is particularly (though understandably) startling. I would be highly suspicious of anyone who claims to have made it through the holidays without encountering a Facebook friend who loudly declared their fondness for the film like a wolf crying to the blue corn moon. Don’t remember? Look in your phone and I promise you’ll find at least one text from your Disneyphile friend that said, “Frozen changed my life” followed by a couple snowflake emoji and four copies of two dancing girls. (Oops, maybe that was just me.)